Kate Moss’s spring collection for Topshop

Kate Moss's collections for Topshop have been a roaring success. With her spring collection about to hit the shops, she gave a rare interview to Cat Callender, showed her around her office and let her in on a few style tips.

BY Cat Callender |
21 March 2009

Kate Moss can't make her mind up. She is in her office at Topshop HQ inspecting samples of her high summer collection and is just not sure whether a white, drapey, jersey vest - with an unfortunately placed knot of fabric above each breast - is 'working' for her. Suddenly she ducks into a changing-room cubicle in one corner of her office, appearing moments later with it on. Instinctively she throws a pose: her right shoulder raised, her chin dipped, her left hip jutting out and her waist swaying in a perfect figure of eight. She is wearing the vest back to front, she has undone the knots and the excess fabric now forms two angelic fluttering wings at the back. It is an entirely different top - it is now most definitely 'working' - and not just because she is wearing it.

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'For the first time I am having to wear a bra,' Moss crows, appraising her reflection in the mirror. 'They just grew overnight. It's great. I put on a few pounds and it went on all the right places - my boobs!' But there is a downside. She now has to contend with visible bra straps. 'Oh no! Look,' she says, glancing at the rear view of the vest. 'F***. Bollocks. My straps are showing.'

Most models, when you meet them, look like gangly, exotic creatures whose angular features come to life on camera but look alien in real life. Not Moss. What you seein pictures is what you get in the flesh - only less make-up. There are those deliciously bowed legs that taper into impossibly spindly ankles. The delightfully wonky teeth. And the hooded eyes that can fix you with a sultry stare one moment and crease into a mischievous twinkle the next.

Her office is housed in possibly the most grey, municipal-style 1960s office block in London, off Oxford Street. Not that the dour environment is preventing her from having fun. 'What do you want? Place your orders!' Moss chirps as she flicks through a rail of clothes and apes a cockney barrow boy's sales pitch. There is an ebullient mood in the room - more hen night than formal design meeting - as Moss and her all-female team sit around a large table tweaking designs and discussing fabric choices over a glass of wine.

When she is not sitting at the table, Moss is shimmying sinuously around the room, pouring herself in and out of clothes, test-driving each piece. This, she says, is a crucial part of the design process. 'I'm no good at looking at style.com and saying, "Oh, I love that dress." I can't tell from looking at something online or in a photograph how it will sit on the body. I have to try it on to see and feel what it is like.' While she may not be able to sketch or make clothes, it is clear from the way she appraises each garment that she is not only very hands on, but also knows her stuff.

An exquisitely beaded 1920s-style flapper dress that is draped over a chair catches her eye. 'Ooh that would be great for the wedding.' She pauses, suddenly realising the headline-worthy nature of what she has just said. 'Not my wedding. A friend's. No. I'm not getting married and my boobs haven't grown because I'm lactating or pregnant,' she continues, setting the record straight on the tabloid headlines that continue to claim Moss is expecting her second child with her musician boyfriend, the Kills' Jamie Hince.

From the reams of tabloid stories dedicated to Moss, you could be forgiven for thinking she spent all her time indulging in hedonistic pursuits. You rarely read about the Kate who tucks into bio yogurt, flaxseed and manuka honey for breakfast; Kate who puts her six-year-old daughter, Lila, to bed most nights; or Kate and her strong work ethic. According to Moss, she 'had to work hard to get out of Croydon', and spent the first four years of her career going on eight castings a day while her friends bunked off school. That is not to say she is perfect. Moss would be the first to admit as much. But even though her success is such that she need never work again, her reputation for punctuality, professionalism and non-diva-like behaviour remains intact.

Moss rarely gives interviews. Even when her life has been dragged through the distorting tabloids, she has never dignified a single word. No excuses. No tears. Not even when this silence has resulted in her being misrepresented. When I ask why she usually refuses to talk to the press, she appears wistful. 'It doesn't matter what you say, or how you are, they [journalists] can make you out to be whatever they want,' she says. 'But what's the point in complaining?'

For someone known for not talking, Moss is actually very chatty. She is also bright, excitable and witty - her quick-fire sentences often finishing in a no-holds-barred laugh that is shamelessly raucous and dirty. She is sexy without appearing self-obsessed, cool without being intimidating and, despite her fame, incredibly down-to-earth. She regales us (in her gravelly, south London twang) with self-deprecating anecdotes about the style wilderness years of her early teens, of Lila's burgeoning fashion nous, and her love of second-hand shopping. But bubbling underneath the banter is an undercurrent of vulnerability that makes you want to scoop her up and give her a big hug.

Today she has agreed to talk with me to promote her latest Topshop collection. It includes a capsule line of camisoles, baby-doll dresses and bustier sheaths decorated with Liberty prints. 'When I was growing up everything was about Liberty prints for me. I had Liberty-print dresses when I was a child,' Moss says. 'They remind me of my mum. Like all those gorgeous 1970s shirts with little flower Liberty prints that are so delicate and really English, and so cute.'

It is Moss's ninth collection for Topshop, a deal struck in 2007 that is rumoured to have netted her more than £1 million per year and the store in excess of £40 million in sales. As you would expect, the collection has evolved. 'The first season was pieces that I loved which had been hanging in my wardrobe that I then tweaked and improved. It was great, but now I can't wear any of it because, oh my God, all my favourite dresses have a Topshop label in them, ha ha.' Although she says the line still revolves around special pieces rather than wardrobe staples, she maintains there has been a shift in her approach. 'Now when I come into the office I'll talk about things that I really want. It's about what I think I am going to wear next season.'

Her designs are the upshot not just of how Kate Moss thinks something should look, but also how it should feel on the body. 'That's what it's all about for me - fit,' Moss trills. 'From being a model and doing fittings with really great designers, you do learn what feels right and looks right. It's like, most people know when a pair of jeans fits them really well. It's the same thing.'

Moss says she had always been a fan of the store, supplementing her designer wardrobe with staples picked up at Topshop. Of course she had been asked to get involved with several designer brands over the years, but she says that felt like too much pressure given that she is not a 'proper designer'. Topshop came along at a point in her life, post Lila, when she had cut back on the shoots she did abroad and had time to commit to the project. And anyway, she says, the store was the best at ripping off her style. 'I met Philip [Green, the owner of Arcadia Group, which owns Topshop], and I liked him. We got on really well,' Moss shrugs. 'I've worked with loads of designers. I always felt uncomfortable, a bit like they saw me as this little model, and he [Green] is the first businessman who didn't. He talked to me straight and I talked to him straight. We laugh at each other but if something needs to get done, we get it done.'

Signing Moss must have been a no-brainer for Green. Everything she wears is analysed, dissected, discussed and aped by hundreds of thousands of girls across the country. Not only do the clothes she wears inspire micro-trends (high-waisted denims, pirate boots, waistcoats, gladiator sandals, hotpants, Hunter wellies), she is also always the first to embrace a way of wearing clothes or champion a particular designer (she was the first to pair ballet flats with skinny jeans, and she wore Balenciaga long before people were talking about it).

But how does Moss herself gauge when she has put together a really good outfit? Ah, that is simple she says. Her litmus test is her driver because he sees her every day. 'If I put something on and he says "Looking nice, Kate", then I know I must be doing something really right.'

Still, hers is a look that is easy to aspire to but hard to nail - perhaps because it doesn't follow a formula. There is no recipe. Nor does she give a fig about trends. Take what Moss is wearing today. She reluctantly admits it is all designer but is keen to point out most of it is several years old (a Westwood top, Marc Jacobs bomber jacket, Azzedine Alaïa leggings with an endearing run down one leg, and Balmain fringed ankle boots). Even to my trained eye, it is all incredibly anonymous - and very black. But what it does smack of is a frisson of danger, a dollop of bad-girl attitude and oodles of sex: the foxy boots, the louche top that is constantly slipping off her shoulder, the leggings that leave little to the imagination.

She says she just throws clothes together moments before she steps out the door. 'I shove it on. Spontaneous outfits are the best ones. It's about chaos, not pre-planning.' It is a technique that probably wouldn't work for mere mortals. Indeed, Moss's friend, the photographer Mario Testino, believes it is a mistake to attribute her allure to simply her choice of clothes or the way she looks. 'It's the mix,' he says. 'The taste, the wildness, the surprise, the looks, the lifestyle, the laughter.'

Moss walked her first John Galliano show when she was just 15 years old. Within three years she had shot to fame with the Calvin Klein ads (in 1992) and Corinne Day's legendary shoot for Vogue the following year (photographs of the model in a pair of knickers with fairy lights taped to the wall behind her sparked moral outrage and were instantly labelled heroin chic). By the age of 20, she was dating Johnny Depp and criss-crossing the Atlantic up to eight times a week. In the decades since, her image has graced more magazine and newspaper pages than any other model or in fact anybody of her generation. She is the gamine non-supermodel who managed to out-super the lot of them. And yet Moss says it could so easily have not been the case.

The week before the model agent Sarah Doukas discovered her in the airport terminal at JFK, the 14-year-old Moss had been holidaying with her father in the Bahamas. Her parents had just split up and the only way her father could coax her into accompanying him was, she says, to buy her a carton of Marlboro Lights. Not only was she smoking on holiday, she also experienced her first holiday romance. All of this, Moss says, contributed to her thinking, 'I was it! I thought I was 18 years old.

I was really pleased with myself. Anyway, the agent came up to me and said have you ever thought about modelling and I was like, "Whaaaat…?"' she recalls, doing a fantastic impression of Catherine Tate's surly teenager Lauren. 'Before that I was really naive and then that holiday, everything changed. If I hadn't had those experiences, who knows what might have happened…' she tails off.

Such disarming honesty is a huge part of Moss's charm. It is what makes her real. That and her Croydon roots, which she would never dream of disowning. Ask her to recall her first proper fashion purchase and she will cite the fur-trimmed goose jacket and high-top trainers she bought in Harlem on another trip she made to New York aged 14. 'That was the real deal for me in Croydon. When I went back home, everyone was like, "Oh my God, you are rocking,"?' Moss laughs. 'I was always a bit of a fashion victim.'

That 14-year-old waif has grown into a confident, self-possessed 35-year-old who knows the fashion industry inside out. 'She instinctively knows the right designers of the moment, the right people to work with and when to change her image,' says the stylist Edward Enninful, who has known and worked with Moss since the early 1990s. 'As a stylist, you're like, damn, you're better than any of us.'

Certainly Moss says she has a profound passion for clothes. 'Somebody said the other day, most models don't like fashion, they just do it as a job,' she gasps. 'I was horrified. My God, why would you do it? If you don't like it, people can treat you like shit. If you don't enjoy the fantasy of it all, if you don't get into the spirit, what's the point?'

According to the photographer Nick Knight, who has shot Moss for 14 of the 26 British Vogue covers she has graced, Moss has got her job down to a fine art. 'Her angles work. She knows how to turn and twist and which side of her face to present to me,' Knight says. 'I recently asked her to turn one way and she said, "I will do Nick but

I never show you that side. I always give you this side because it will look better for you." So she understands the lighting, she understands her angles, she understands everything about her.'

Moss isn't just able to sell the products she is hired to sell (the mascara, the handbags, the designer clothes). If a news story has a link with her - no matter how tenuous - newspaper editors can't resist using her image to illustrate it, splashing her face on their front covers. They understand that the power of her image is quite remarkable. Even when she was briefly dropped by a number of fashion houses in 2005 (when pictures of her allegedly doing lines of cocaine were splattered over the papers), those brands couldn't stay away for long. If anything the furore increased her currency and within months her earnings had tripled.

Given the short-shelf-life nature of most modelling careers, Moss's enduring success is exceptional. Perhaps, says Knight, it has something to do with the fact that it is impossible to take a photograph of her without her personality coming through. 'When she puts on a piece of clothing and stands in front of the camera, you have somebody who is showing you the life behind that piece of clothing, giving it a context and a narrative.'

Moss's analysis is far more pragmatic. 'I've never worked on a job and said, "Let's do a run-of-the-mill editorial story." It's pointless. It's only interesting if it's something that's creating a new visual,' Moss says, reeling off a list of shoots. There was the time she had to bounce on a trampoline, in a field, in the middle of winter wearing only a pair of skimpy knickers. Or the time she spent a whole day swaying on a swing suspended from a studio ceiling for Nick Knight. Or even when she recently spent hours having a bucket of water thrown in her face for a Mert & Marcus shoot.

One aspect in her life that cannot be ignored is Kate Moss's near-mythological status. Her face, plastered across magazines and billboards, is one of the most recognised in the world. As for her every move, it is what keeps the gossip mills turning. It is part of the reason Moss loves her home in the countryside. 'I can walk around without being papped. I can go for long walks without being disturbed,' she says. 'I can go to the pub, and go to Londis and buy some cheese and crisps.'

Tonight, though, she is off to the theatre to support her friend Sadie Frost in her play. Which means she needs to find an outfit to wear. As she pulls off her top and deliberates over what to wear for her night out, I see the Moss magic in action. She spots a grey smock with balloon sleeves from her spring collection hanging on a rail and whips it over her head. Without even looking in the mirror, she knows it doesn't look right with her ankle boots. She goes back to the rail and spies another one of her designs, a laser-cut suede minidress, which she wriggles on over her leggings with the run in them. She throws her bomber jacket over the top, and hey presto! She is off into the night and the pop of the paparazzi's bulbs.